OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Towards Input Device Satisfaction Through Hand Anthropometry
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2015
Year: 2015

We collected the hand anthropometric data of 91 respondents to come up with a Filipino-based measurement to determine the suitability of an input device for a digital equipment, the standard PC keyboard. For correlation purposes, we also collected other relevant information like age, height, province of origin, and gender, among others. We computed the percentiles for each finger to classify various finger dimensions and identify length-specific anthropometric cut-points. We compared the percentiles of each finger dimension against the actual length of the longest key combinations when correct finger placement is used for typing, to determine whether the standard PC keyboard is fit for use by our sampled population. Our analysis shows that the members of the population with hand dimensions at extended position below 75th percentile and at 99th percentile are the ones who would most likely not reach the longest key combination for the left and the right hands, respectively. Using machine vision and image processing techniques, we automated the anthropometric process and compared the accuracy of its measurements to that of manual process'. We compared the measurement generated by our automated anthropometric process with the measurements using the manual one and we found out that they have a very minimal absolute difference. The data collected from this study could be used in other studies such as determining a good design for mobile and other handheld devices, or input devices other than keyboard. The automated method that we developed could be used to easily measure hand dimensions given a digital image of the hand and could be extended for measuring the entire human body for various other applications.
On the Conservation of Number of Nodes and the Consumed Energy in Wireless Sensor Network: A Statistical Mechanics Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2015
Year: 2015

The dominant dynamics of sensor networks consist of using the energy of the sensor nodes to create the topology of hierarchical clustering using topology control protocols. The topology thus created will always have optimum number of nodes after using a certain amount of energy, vice versa optimum amount of energy expense to use a certain number of nodes. This paper attempts to find a relation between the number of nodes and the energy consumed using statistical mechanics. This relationship thus obtained validates considerably well with the simulation experiments with topology control protocols
Asynchronous Byzantine Agreement with Optimal Resilience and Linear Complexity
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2015
Year: 2015

Given a system with $n > 3t + 1$ processes, where $t$ is the tolerated number of faulty ones, we present a fast asynchronous Byzantine agreement protocol that can reach agreement in $O(t)$ expected running time. This improves the $O(n^2)$ expected running time of Abraham, Dolev, and Halpern [PODC 2008]. Furthermore, if $n = (3 + \varepsilon) t$ for any $\varepsilon > 0$, our protocol can reach agreement in $O (1 / \varepsilon)$ expected running time. This improves the result of Feldman and Micali [STOC 1988] (with constant expected running time when $n > 4 t$).
Building a Good Team: Secretary Problems and the Supermodular Degree
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2015
Year: 2015

In the Secretary Problem, one has to hire the best among n candidates. The candidates are interviewed, one at a time, at a random order, and one has to decide on the spot, whether to hire a candidate or continue interviewing. It is well known that the best candidate can be hired with a probability of 1/e (Dynkin, 1963). Recent works extend this problem to settings in which multiple candidates can be hired, subject to some constraint. Here, one wishes to hire a set of candidates maximizing a given set function. Almost all extensions considered in the literature assume the objective set function is either linear or submodular. Unfortunately, real world functions might not have either of these properties. Consider, for example, a scenario where one hires researchers for a project. Indeed, it can be that some researchers can substitute others for that matter. However, it can also be that some combinations of researchers result in synergy (see, e.g, Woolley et al., Science 2010, for a research about collective intelligence). The first phenomenon can be modeled by a submoudlar set function, while the latter cannot. In this work, we study the secretary problem with an arbitrary non-negative monotone function, subject to a general matroid constraint. It is not difficult to prove that, generally, only very poor results can be obtained for this class of objective functions. We tackle this hardness by combining the following: 1.Parametrizing our algorithms by the supermodular degree of the objective function (defined by Feige and Izsak, ITCS 2013), which, roughly speaking, measures the distance of a function from being submodular. 2.Suggesting an (arguably) natural model that permits approximation guarantees that are polynomial in the supermodular degree (as opposed to the standard model which allows only exponential guarantees).
Fast Desynchronization For Decentralized Multichannel Medium Access Control
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2015
Year: 2015

Distributed desynchronization algorithms are key to wireless sensor networks as they allow for medium access control in a decentralized manner. In this paper, we view desynchronization primitives as iterative methods that solve optimization problems. In particular, by formalizing a well established desynchronization algorithm as a gradient descent method, we establish novel upper bounds on the number of iterations required to reach convergence. Moreover, by using Nesterov's accelerated gradient method, we propose a novel desynchronization primitive that provides for faster convergence to the steady state. Importantly, we propose a novel algorithm that leads to decentralized time-synchronous multichannel TDMA coordination by formulating this task as an optimization problem. Our simulations and experiments on a densely-connected IEEE 802.15.4-based wireless sensor network demonstrate that our scheme provides for faster convergence to the steady state, robustness to hidden nodes, higher network throughput and comparable power dissipation with respect to the recently standardized IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 time-synchronized channel hopping (TSCH) scheme.
The Service-Bond Paradigm - Potentials for a Sustainable, ICT-enabled Future
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2015
Year: 2015

The service paradigm as we know it has gone through a long journey of evolution and improvement, and it seems that a service-oriented vision to activities in general could serve as a potential platform for the global transition to a sustainable future. However, it is also apparent that the services themselves are required to move beyond their traditional definition in order to prevent any secondary side effect. Here, a new paradigm is proposed based on bonding between entities involved in a service interaction, service chaining, or service orchestration. It is purposed to serve as a vehicle to approach sustainability at the global level in a manner that is thoughtful, collaborative, and incremental. Time-modulated implementation of the proposed service-bond paradigm is considered in order to reduce the associated risks and liabilities. The service bonds are then simply generalized toward representing bonding among more than two entities. Finally, a practical application of ICT agents in enabling the service bonds is presented in a use case related to smart houses. In this use case, some ICT-based agents (federal regulars, among other ICT agents) are considered to represent and govern services and service bonds of a household with external entities such as utilities.
ShakeMe: Key Generation From Shared Motion
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2015
Year: 2015

Devices equipped with accelerometer sensors such as today's mobile devices can make use of motion to exchange information. A typical example for shared motion is shaking of two devices which are held together in one hand. Deriving a shared secret (key) from shared motion, e.g. for device pairing, is an obvious application for this. Only the keys need to be exchanged between the peers and neither the motion data nor the features extracted from it. This makes the pairing fast and easy. For this, each device generates an information signal (key) independently of each other and, in order to pair, they should be identical. The key is essentially derived by quantizing certain well discriminative features extracted from the accelerometer data after an implicit synchronization. In this paper, we aim at finding a small set of effective features which enable a significantly simpler quantization procedure than the prior art. Our tentative results with authentic accelerometer data show that this is possible with a competent accuracy ($76$%) and key strength (entropy approximately $15$ bits).
Optimal self-assembly of finite shapes at temperature 1 in 3D
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2015
Year: 2015

Working in a three-dimensional variant of Winfree's abstract Tile Assembly Model, we show that, for an arbitrary finite, connected shape $X \subset \mathbb{Z}^2$, there is a tile set that uniquely self-assembles into a 3D representation of a scaled-up version of $X$ at temperature 1 in 3D with optimal program-size complexity (the "program-size complexity", also known as "tile complexity", of a shape is the minimum number of tile types required to uniquely self-assemble it). Moreover, our construction is "just barely" 3D in the sense that it only places tiles in the $z = 0$ and $z = 1$ planes. Our result is essentially a just-barely 3D temperature 1 simulation of a similar 2D temperature 2 result by Soloveichik and Winfree (SICOMP 2007).
Simple SIMON: FPGA implementations of the SIMON 64/128 Block Cipher
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2015
Year: 2015

In this paper we will present various hardware architecture designs for implementing the SIMON 64/128 block cipher as a cryptographic component offering encryption, decryption and self-contained key-scheduling capabilities and discuss the issues and design options we encountered and the tradeoffs we made in implementing them. Finally, we will present the results of our hardware architectures' implementation performances on the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA series.
Jamming-Aided Secure Communication in Massive MIMO Rician Channels
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2015
Year: 2015

In this paper, we investigate the artificial noise-aided jamming design for a transmitter equipped with large antenna array in Rician fading channels. We figure out that when the number of transmit antennas tends to infinity, whether the secrecy outage happens in a Rician channel depends on the geometric locations of eavesdroppers. In this light, we first define and analytically describe the secrecy outage region (SOR), indicating all possible locations of an eavesdropper that can cause secrecy outage. After that, the secrecy outage probability (SOP) is derived, and a jamming-beneficial range, i.e., the distance range of eavesdroppers which enables uniform jamming to reduce the SOP, is determined. Then, the optimal power allocation between messages and artificial noise is investigated for different scenarios. Furthermore, to use the jamming power more efficiently and further reduce the SOP, we propose directional jamming that generates jamming signals at selected beams (mapped to physical angles) only, and power allocation algorithms are proposed for the cases with and without the information of the suspicious area, i.e., possible locations of eavesdroppers. We further extend the discussions to multiuser and multi-cell scenarios. At last, numerical results validate our conclusions and show the effectiveness of our proposed jamming power allocation schemes.
Knowledge Compilation of Logic Programs Using Approximation Fixpoint Theory
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2015
Year: 2015

To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP), Proceedings of ICLP 2015 Recent advances in knowledge compilation introduced techniques to compile \emph{positive} logic programs into propositional logic, essentially exploiting the constructive nature of the least fixpoint computation. This approach has several advantages over existing approaches: it maintains logical equivalence, does not require (expensive) loop-breaking preprocessing or the introduction of auxiliary variables, and significantly outperforms existing algorithms. Unfortunately, this technique is limited to \emph{negation-free} programs. In this paper, we show how to extend it to general logic programs under the well-founded semantics. We develop our work in approximation fixpoint theory, an algebraical framework that unifies semantics of different logics. As such, our algebraical results are also applicable to autoepistemic logic, default logic and abstract dialectical frameworks.
A Reliability of Measurement Based Algorithm for Adaptive Estimation in Sensor Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SY 2015
Year: 2015

In this paper we consider the issue of reliability of measurements in distributed adaptive estimation problem. To this aim, we assume a sensor network with different observation noise variance among the sensors and propose new estimation method based on incremental distributed least mean-square (IDLMS) algorithm. The proposed method contains two phases: I) Estimation of each sensors observation noise variance, and II) Estimation of the desired parameter using the estimated observation variances. To deal with the reliability of measurements, in the second phase of the proposed algorithm, the step-size parameter is adjusted for each sensor according to its observation noise variance. As our simulation results show, the proposed algorithm considerably improves the performance of the IDLMS algorithm in the same condition.
Connectivity Algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2015
Year: 2015

In this work, for the given adjacency matrix of a graph, we present an algorithm which checks the connectivity of a graph and computes all of its connected components. Also, it is mathematically proved that the algorithm presents all the desired results.
The Degrees of Freedom of the Interference Channel with a Cognitive Relay under Delayed Feedback
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2015
Year: 2015

This paper studies the interference channel with a cognitive relay (ICCR) under delayed feedback. Three types of delayed feedback are studied: delayed channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), delayed output feedback, and delayed Shannon feedback. Outer bounds are derived for the DoF region of the two-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ICCR with delayed feedback as well as without feedback. For the single-input single-output (SISO) scenario, optimal schemes are proposed based on retrospective interference alignment. It is shown that while a cognitive relay without feedback cannot extend the sum-DoF beyond $1$ in the two-user SISO interference channel, delayed feedback in the same scenario can extend the sum-DoF to $4/3$. For the MIMO case, achievable schemes are obtained via extensions of retrospective interference alignment, leading to DoF regions that meet the respective upper bounds.
Extracting State Transition Models from i* Models
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2015
Year: 2015

i* models are inherently sequence agnostic. There is an immediate need to bridge the gap between such a sequence agnostic model and an industry implemented process modelling standard like Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN). This work is an attempt to build State Transition Models from i* models. In this paper, we first spell out the Naive Algorithm formally, which is on the lines of Formal Tropos. We demonstrate how the growth of the State Transition Model Space can be mapped to the problem of finding the number of possible paths between the Least Upper Bound (LUB) and the Greatest Lower Bound (GLB) of a k-dimensional hypercube Lattice structure. We formally present the mathematics for doing a quantitative analysis of the space growth. The Naive Algorithm has its main drawback in the hyperexponential explosion caused in the State Transition Model space. This is identified and the Semantic Implosion Algorithm is proposed which exploits the temporal information embedded within the i* model of an enterprise to reduce the rate of growth of the State Transition Model space. A comparative quantitative analysis between the two approaches concludes the superiority of the Semantic Implosion Algorithm.
Egalitarianism of Random Assignment Mechanisms
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2015
Year: 2015

We consider the egalitarian welfare aspects of random assignment mechanisms when agents have unrestricted cardinal utilities over the objects. We give bounds on how well different random assignment mechanisms approximate the optimal egalitarian value and investigate the effect that different well-known properties like ordinality, envy-freeness, and truthfulness have on the achievable egalitarian value. Finally, we conduct detailed experiments analyzing the tradeoffs between efficiency with envy-freeness or truthfulness using two prominent random assignment mechanisms --- random serial dictatorship and the probabilistic serial mechanism --- for different classes of utility functions and distributions.
Discrete geodesics and cellular automata
Venue: arXiv cs.DM 2015
Year: 2015

This paper proposes a dynamical notion of discrete geodesics, understood as straightest trajectories in discretized curved spacetime. The notion is generic, as it is formulated in terms of a general deviation function, but readily specializes to metric spaces such as discretized pseudo-riemannian manifolds. It is effective: an algorithm for computing these geodesics naturally follows, which allows numerical validation---as shown by computing the perihelion shift of a Mercury-like planet. It is consistent, in the continuum limit, with the standard notion of timelike geodesics in a pseudo-riemannian manifold. Whether the algorithm fits within the framework of cellular automata is discussed at length. KEYWORDS: Discrete connection, parallel transport, general relativity, Regge calculus.
Coordinated Dynamic Spectrum Management of LTE-U and Wi-Fi Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2015
Year: 2015

This paper investigates the co-existence of Wi-Fi and LTE in emerging unlicensed frequency bands which are intended to accommodate multiple radio access technologies. Wi-Fi and LTE are the two most prominent access technologies being deployed today, motivating further study of the inter-system interference arising in such shared spectrum scenarios as well as possible techniques for enabling improved co-existence. An analytical model for evaluating the baseline performance of co-existing Wi-Fi and LTE is developed and used to obtain baseline performance measures. The results show that both Wi-Fi and LTE networks cause significant interference to each other and that the degradation is dependent on a number of factors such as power levels and physical topology. The model-based results are partially validated via experimental evaluations using USRP based SDR platforms on the ORBIT testbed. Further, inter-network coordination with logically centralized radio resource management across Wi-Fi and LTE systems is proposed as a possible solution for improved co-existence. Numerical results are presented showing significant gains in both Wi-Fi and LTE performance with the proposed inter-network coordination approach.
Personality Dimensions and Temperaments of Engineering Professors and Students - A Survey
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2015
Year: 2015

This research work aims to study personality profiles and temperaments of Pakistani software engineering professors and students. In this survey we have collected personality profiles of 18 professors and 92 software engineering students. According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument, the most prominent personality type among professors as well as among students is a combination of Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging (ISTJ). The study shows ITs (Introverts and Thinking) and IJs (Introverts and Judging) are the leading temperaments among the professors. About the students data, the results of the study indicate SJs (Sensing and Judging) and ISs (Introverts and Sensing) as the dominant temperaments.
An Architecture Process Maturity Model of Software Product Line Engineering
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2015
Year: 2015

Software architecture has been a key research area in the software engineering community due to its significant role in creating high quality software. The trend of developing product lines rather than single products has made the software product line a viable option in the industry. Software product line architecture is regarded as one of the crucial components in the product lines, since all of the resulting products share this common architecture. The increased popularity of software product lines demands a process maturity evaluation methodology. Consequently, this paper presents an architecture process maturity model for software product line engineering to evaluate the current maturity of the product line architecture development process in an organization. Assessment questionnaires and a rating methodology comprise the framework of this model. The objective of the questionnaires is to collect information about the software product line architecture development process. Thus, in general this work contributes towards the establishment of a comprehensive and unified strategy for the process maturity evaluation of software product line engineering. Furthermore, we conducted two case studies and reported the assessment results, which show the maturity of the architecture development process in two organizations
Myths and Realities about Online Forums in Open Source Software Development: An Empirical Study
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2015
Year: 2015

The use of free and open source software (OSS) is gaining momentum due to the ever increasing availability and use of the Internet. Organizations are also now adopting open source software, despite some reservations, in particular regarding the provision and availability of support. Some of the biggest concerns about free and open source software are post release software defects and their rectification, management of dynamic requirements and support to the users. A common belief is that there is no appropriate support available for this class of software. A contradictory argument is that due to the active involvement of Internet users in online forums, there is in fact a large resource available that communicates and manages the provision of support. The research model of this empirical investigation examines the evidence available to assess whether this commonly held belief is based on facts given the current developments in OSS or simply a myth, which has developed around OSS development. We analyzed a dataset consisting of 1880 open source software projects covering a broad range of categories in this investigation. The results show that online forums play a significant role in managing software defects, implementation of new requirements and providing support to the users in open source software and have become a major source of assistance in maintenance of the open source projects.
A Neuro-Fuzzy Model for Function Point Calibration
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2015
Year: 2015

The need to update the calibration of Function Point (FP) complexity weights is discussed, whose aims are to fit specific software application, to reflect software industry trend, and to improve cost estimation. Neuro-Fuzzy is a technique that incorporates the learning ability from neural network and the ability to capture human knowledge from fuzzy logic. The empirical validation using ISBSG data repository Release 8 shows a 22% improvement in software effort estimation after calibration using Neuro-Fuzzy technique.